by Joe Clifford
Francis opened Illuminations, his copy worn and tattered from having been folded too many times. He poked a finger at the table of contents.
“I said I read it. It didn’t make any sense. Not sure what you want me to say. Jacob was delusional when I knew him. He got worse. That—” I gestured in the general direction of the zine “—only proves it.”
“Yeah,” Francis replied, pedantic and bored. “The world is round. Vaccines don’t cause autism. All food is genetically modified at this point. Ever see what a banana is supposed to look like?”
“Banana? What—?”
“You’re not as smart as you think, boy.”
I checked the clock on the microwave, letting my stare linger, hoping Francis would take the hint. He did not. If anything, my pause gave him time to gather his thoughts and present a more unified presentation.
“These writings got my grandson killed.”
“Writings? It’s a cut-and-paste job from a guy who barely graduated high school.” I felt bad being dismissive and speaking ill of my dead friend, but I wasn’t going to legitimize ignorance and debate whether windmills caused cancer, not with a geriatric Sherlock Holmes.
“You’re right. A lot of my grandson’s work stretched the limits of logic. He was also young, still learning how all this worked.” Francis stopped. “But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Something he wrote got him killed.”
I opened my palms—Okay, show me the proof. His suggestion preposterous, baseless.
“My grandson called me the day before they found his body.”
My friend had been missing for as long five days. If true, that meant Francis had spoken with him just before he fell in that quarry…
“Does Mrs. Balfour know this?”
“I told her, yes.”
Why didn’t Mrs. Balfour mention that part to me? Then again, she had so much on her mind. Why should she devote even a fraction of her effort to more unfounded nonsense?
“Did you tell the police?” I asked.
“That Jacob had called me? Yeah, I told ’em.”
“And?”
“And they looked like you’re looking at me now. I ain’t lying. Jacob stumbled on a secret, if by accident. It got people scared, and they came after him. Jacob caught a bus out of Utica, headed west, told me he was being followed and that he was headed for the border.”
“Mexico?”
“Canada. Tried to get across. Border Patrol turned him away. He had too much money and jewelry on him. Nine grand. I asked what was happening. He said he didn’t think he should tell me, that it would put me in danger too.”
“Money and jewelry? What are you talking about?”
Francis shrugged off my questions, as if they were trivial and insignificant.
“Mrs. Balfour said no one in the family speaks with you.”
“I talked to Jacob. He was on the run.”
What could I say to that? Riches and gold? A fugitive? I hopped up and opened the door into the blistering sun.
The old man pushed himself to his feet, stopping in front of me, eye to eye. Despite his age, he was pretty imposing. I was almost six feet, a lean one eighty. When Francis brushed past, I saw he had me by at least a couple inches and maybe twenty pounds, a barrel-chested old man whittled from hard bone and forged steel.
I stood at the door waiting for him to leave. Francis crammed the folded copy of Illuminations back in his pocket, returning with a scrap of paper, which had a number scrawled on it. He slapped the note in my hand.
“In case you change your mind. I’m staying at the Best Western. Center of town.”
I smiled, nodded, thanked him for stopping by, and said to have a nice day. Then I slammed the door. I wasn’t changing my mind about anything, and the last person I was seeking out was Francis Balfour.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After Francis left, I debated calling Mrs. Balfour. The visit was disturbing, alarming. Maybe by speaking with her, I could help quell her concerns. Here was this man, whom she hadn’t heard from in years, claiming he’d spoken to her son a couple days before he died. That is, if Francis could be trusted. Who was to say he wasn’t full of it and off his rocker?
I decided it wasn’t worth the gamble. Any remedy Francis offered would surely come with twice the dose of poison. What was I going to tell her anyway? Nothing about Francis’s visit offered remedy. It was pure conjecture on his part. In fact, even if true—and I was skeptical—Francis’s theory of rogue darts hitting a conspiratorial mark would only further agitate, inducing more questions with no definitive answers. The opposite of what Mrs. Balfour needed. She needed closure, not crackpot diatribes masquerading as hope to prolong the misery.
I returned to the kitchen table to try to solve the puzzles I’d been working on. Solving puzzles had always been a great distraction, a soothing detour that allowed me to get out of my head, turn off the wheels, get my brain to go radio silent by focusing on a singular task. The diversionary tactic had worked ever since I was a boy. It did not help today. Words I should’ve known eluded me. I prided myself on my ability to solve crosswords, especially earlier-in-the-week puzzles before the weekend presented more of a challenge. After I failed to figure out an easy clue for Cathode Ray—an answer I only got after frustration sent me searching the internet, an amateur move—I decided to call Utica PD.
I asked to speak with Rachael Lourey, the detective I’d met at the Balfours. She wasn’t in. I left a message, inquiring whether they’d found any cash or jewelry as Francis claimed.
I went back to wrapping all the knickknacks I’d acquired over the years. I had several of these little tchotchkes—tiny glass dogs, plastic people, imaginary villages. An odd hobby of mine, well, more habit. Anytime I encountered a discarded toy or figurine—small ones that could fit in my pocket—I’d pick it up. Now I had entire shelves of these lost children’s toys, miniature villages with tiny cars, buses, and little trains that ran on time. I tried to remember when this hobby first started. I couldn’t recall. It was when I was young, I knew that.
In the last year alone, my collection had grown exponentially. Walking to campus produced a veritable treasure trove. A quick panic flashed: what if things went well tonight and I ended up bringing Sam back to my place? She walks in a sees a grown man who keeps dolls?
I swept them all into a trash bag. Entire cities destroyed with the merciless fury of a tsunami. I cinched the trash bag and tossed it into the closet with the rest of the belongings I’d be taking to Syracuse. Then I stomped the bag further, stuffing it deeper among earthly possessions, past the clothes already boxed and the manila envelopes stuffed with old papers—social security card, birth certificate, passport. Closing the closet door felt like an accomplishment.
When I walked back in the kitchen, I saw Jacob’s zine Illuminations by the front door. It must’ve fallen out of Francis’s back pocket. I picked it up, crumpled it, dropped it on top of the trash receptacle. Then I plucked it back out. I didn’t buy into Francis’s rogue theories—the police weren’t incompetent—but I wanted to believe something or someone was responsible. Murder didn’t change the end result—dead was dead and Jacob was gone—but having a finger to point and feet to lay the blame meant there would be accountability. Justice.
Smoothing out the crumpled papers, I reread the zine. My impression of it hadn’t changed. Nothing registered as more accurate or truer than last time. Total cracker-jack noise. Vast global conspiracies. Radiation fallout from blown Japanese reactors tainting the world’s fish supply, mercury and isotopes in your sushi. Everyone in on it. It was heartbreaking to read. Wasted potential aside, these stories highlighted a little boy terrified, scared to breathe the air around him because a nefarious, unseen entity, part of this larger conglomerate, this sinister global machination whose sole function it was to profit at anoth
er’s expense, was out to destroy him. Food, sky, radio waves. All malicious, all hellbent on his destruction, all invincible. How horrible was Jacob’s life? He lived in constant fear, forever battling a relentless, invisible, indefatigable enemy. No wonder he killed himself.
Then I saw it again. The Shadow People. The phrase made my skin crawl and gut ache, a knife stuck and twisted. I wouldn’t have read it, except this particular article cited a source. Jessiesgirl81. All I could think of was that cheesy Rick Springfield song from about a hundred years ago. They still played it on classic rock radio, which I seldom listened to.
Maybe because it was a female—the prospect that my friend wasn’t so lonely—I forged ahead. The writing was dreadful, random nouns capitalized, half the words in quotes, punctuation be damned. The premise: The Shadow People had descended upon a tiny town in rural western New York called Wroughton. Never heard of it. This Jessiesgirl81 was like Jacob’s star witness, insider source, having gone deep undercover to get the scoop. In the introduction, Jacob wrote they met in a chatroom on the Dark Web. It seemed to me announcing they met on illegal sites might not have been the smartest strategy. All these miscues paled in comparison to the basic premise of the piece.
The subject matter might’ve been the craziest of the bunch. The Shadow People were abducting people in broad daylight, and this Jessie had seen it, and I guess she was working with Jacob to…honestly, I didn’t know what they hoped to accomplish. They couldn’t go to the authorities because they sounded like idiots, but now the entire town of Wroughton was in jeopardy, the Shadow People with a taste for human flesh. It was at that point I couldn’t take any more.
I started to crumple the pamphlet back up but stopped. I uncrinkled the zine and left it on the kitchen table. No, I didn’t believe it. I also didn’t feel right tossing the last remnant of my friend in the garbage. So I’d take it with me, like those castoff toys I rescued from the pavement. I’d resurrect them in my new apartment, sticking it all back on a shelf, preserved and protected, so they’d never die.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dinner with Sam couldn’t have gone better. Delmonico’s was one of the nicest restaurants in town. Lots of dark red curtains, deep mahogany tables with gleaming, shiny metal parts, a place that never ran out of piping hot breads and cloth napkins. Well-moisturized waiters offered multiple variations on water, still or sparkling or infused with grapefruit and other citrus essences, before running down a list of the day’s specials: fresh fish plucked from the cold waters of the Atlantic; rare succulent meats slow simmered with exotic spices; crisp seasonal vegetables. Conversation came effortlessly, Sam laughing at all my jokes, leaving me to wonder how I’d managed to pull this off.
I’d always been resourceful, and I went on plenty of dates, but I couldn’t remember the last time I got the girl I really wanted. Desire spells disaster. Anytime you want anything that badly, you’re bound to be disappointed. Nothing lives up to expectation. You might get what you want, but never when you want it, or how you want it; there is always a caveat, a fine-print warning label that screams, Careful what you wish for! Except this time what I’d wished I’d won. And I’d done so without my A game. All semester I hadn’t put my best face forward with Sam. Yet, she must’ve seen something in me because here we were. Whatever her reason for agreeing to date me—and after two coffees, one lunch, and a dinner, I felt comfortable saying we were dating—I was basking in the afterglow of victory. Of course, when you realize what you have, you must accept what you have to lose.
After dinner, we headed to Soyka’s, the hipster dive bar down the street. I’d never been a fan of anything hipster—I loathed the ghetto fabulous vibe Soyka’s affected. In one of Cortland’s nicer neighborhoods, the bar was trying too hard to come across as “street” or “hood” or whatever other vernacular the it-kids used these days to approximate hard-earned style points without taking any of the hits. These efforts rendered the place inauthentic, a poser trying too hard, like that friend from L.A. who casually drops the name of the B-actor who shared a dry cleaner with his mom. Made me sick. All the guys with ironic mustaches and tiny hats, girls strutting around with sailor dresses, stamped with Ed Hardy tattoos, twirling and strutting, acting cutesy or tough or whatever role they were adopting for the night.
I wasn’t drinking, unless a pear cider counts. Sam wanted a rum and Coke. The bar strove to project low rent but their prices were still inflated—beer poured in mason jars and served with an assortment of olives on tiny plates for fifteen bucks. You could get the same drinks at the liquor store next door for half the price.
It was crowded for a weeknight, especially now that the semester was over. This wasn’t a university town where students returned home for break—SUNY Cortland was a commuter school just this side of a community college. I didn’t think there were enough townies to fill a place like Soyka’s on a random Tuesday night.
I was standing at the counter to order us a round, Sam at a back table we’d secured. I looked over the line. Most of the patrons were on the older side, closer to forty than my age. I didn’t recognize anyone. Not a shocker. I’d been in this town for several years and, outside of school and the hospital, I didn’t know many people.
Springsteen on the jukebox. Springsteen was always on any time I braved one of these townie bars. I didn’t know the name of the song—they all sounded alike to me. It was the one about never surrendering. Which killed me. Guy was a billionaire. Easy for him to say. Go back to your mansion and take a bubble bath in your boat-sized tub, check your financial portfolio investments. How that guy kept selling himself as a blue-collar man of the people was one of life’s enduring mysteries.
From down the end of the bar, I felt it, the way you can tell whenever someone is staring at you, the uneasy sensation it creates. At first, I couldn’t isolate the source of my discomfort. I began to squirm, a bug under the magnifying glass.
When I turned, I saw him.
He caught my eye. I stared right back. Usually when you do that, the other person steps off. Not this guy. He wasn’t any bigger than I, wasn’t that much older, maybe mid-thirties, with a cop mustache and scruff, but he didn’t come across like a cop. I waited for him to break off the stare but he didn’t. A stupid show of machismo, I knew. But no guy likes to be the one seen backing down. Uncomfortable as it was, I intensified my gaze, aware of the beads of sweat forming on the back of my neck. Finally, he turned away. My relief didn’t last long. His attention fixed on Sam, who had to be wondering what was taking me so long. That’s what this was about? Sam. Some jackhole moving in on my date, mad because I was having drinks with a woman like Sam Holahan and he was at the bar alone, probably twice divorced and unemployed. Then I caught another guy doing the same. Sam to me, me to Sam. Thankfully, the bartender asked what I was having, which gave me an excuse to bail on the pissing contest with these two clowns as I pretended to be engrossed in getting my order right.
When I got back to Sam, I set down the drinks and, without seeing if either jerk was still watching, planted one right on Sam’s lips. A deep, lustful kiss full of passion, which caught her by surprise. I wasn’t much for public displays of affection, but I really laid it on, open mouth, hot and heavy.
After we caught our breath, Sam and I attacked our drinks. Well, she did. I nursed the single cider. She pounded her rum and Coke like a shot.
“What do you say we get out of here?” I nodded over my shoulder. “My place is just up Stuart. Not far. We can walk. A few blocks.”
Sam searched the bar, biting her lip. “I have to get up early—”
“Come on,” I said, turning up the charm. “One drink?” When she didn’t bite, I added, “Dessert? I think I have Oreos.” I was alluding to that stupid comment I’d made at the vending machine that first night, but it made her giggle.
“I guess…one drink.”
I hadn’t been thinking of how to get her in bed. I was enjoying the night, taking it slow. I also wasn’t i
gnoring the signs. She was clearly into me, if that kiss had been any indication.
When we got outside, I extracted a twenty from my wallet, nodding at the liquor store across the street. “You want to grab something to drink? I don’t have much in my apartment.” I recalled the lone beer Francis drank the other day. I motioned to the alley behind Tremont Street. “I have to get my car.”
“I thought you lived nearby.”
“I do.”
“Your car’s fine where it is.”
“I’d rather park in my lot.” That was true. I didn’t explain the other part, how when things weren’t where they were supposed to be, it made me restless. Not panicky. More…unsettled. It was hard for me to concentrate when my possessions were in disarray. I appreciated routine and order.
She redirected her attention on the liquor store. “What kind of alcohol?”
“Whatever you want.”
I assured her I’d be right back and began walking up the alley behind Delmonico’s.
A brisk walk on a cool evening, holding hands with Sam, would’ve been nice. But I hadn’t had much to drink and figured I might as well put my car back where it belonged. There’s nothing wrong with liking things the way they are supposed to be. Cohesion, logic, order, routine—these are signs of stability, not neurosis.
In the shadows of the back alley, I turned around and watched Sam crossing the street, heading into the liquor store. Bathed in pink neon, backlit by brighter fluorescents, she cast a long shadow. With each step that shadow warped and twisted until it was rendered unrecognizable.
